Thursday, 22 January 2009

So, about those would-be pastors ...

The results of my questionnaire at the Bible college I've begun teaching a course at were ... interesting!

A small number of answers seemed to be carefully constructed to avoid saying "No" directly, but... of a class of twenty-five 4th year students mostly training to be pastors or missionaries, the number who could unambiguously say that yes, they had read the entire Bible was... ten. The number who had read it more than once was... four. The number who had read it more than twice was... one- this star pupil had managed five times. On average these students are 29 years old, have professed faith for 14 years, and have been preaching publicly for 8 years. They have all completed secondary school. If these Christians had read on average just one page of the Bible each morning and evening since being converted, they would by now each have read the Bible through 9 times.

The next thing (next week) is a Bible quiz to ascertain more accurately the level of actual Bible knowledge...

Most amusing misunderstanding of the question:

Q. Do you preach? How long have you been preaching for? A. Yes. About 25-40 minutes.

1 comment:

Hi David,Thinking about your question on how many times people have read the Bible, I wondered whether rephrasing it might produce a more useful answer. If I were asked that question, I would say that I have read the complete Bible only twice, but I have read the NT more times than I could count, and some specific books of the OT numerous times. The Gospels, and some Epistles like Romans and Hebrews are read regularly, but some like James infrequently.